First of all, the existence of this group is pure coincidence. On the legendary last Error In Line party in Dresden, members of Cruor sat behind members of Paranoia out of pure coincidence and actually got to know each other this way. If that hadn't happened, it is very unlikely Paradox had ever come into existence.

Then, in 2003 on the ParaCon party in Selters/Germany, the two (re)active members of Cruor, a demo group active in the early days of the Falcon, and the most active member of Paranoia decided to form a new Atari-only group, focussing on demo-development. It took a while to find a suitable group name, in fact, even on the last day of the ParaCon party, there was still no decision in sight. However, because forming a new group in the time of clearly visible decay of the Atari demo scene seemed sort of grotesque and because the name had a nice ring to it, the new group was decided to be called "Paradox".

Naturally, other visitors of the ParaCon commented that this name already been taken by a rather famous Amiga/SNES/PSX-group but the group decided to stick to the name still as there is no right of exclusiveness within the demo-scene. Because the group wanted to focus on the Atari STE, which was not very popular back then among Atari demo groups, the slogan "Alive on a dead machine - That's Paradox" was added as a signature catch phrase.

In 2005, briefly before the group won the Outline party demo competition, musician 505 joined the group for first level music support and in 2009, the graphician Dan, member of the famous Falcon-demo group Lazer, also joined the team and the group remains active until today.

Members

Zweckform
The graphician of the former Falcon group Cruor enjoys making pixel graphics mostly but also provided 3D modelled graphics for certain occassions such as the 20 years STE megademo.

RA
Coder of the former Falcon group Cruor and specialized in clock-cycle-exact effects as well as PC tool programming for converters.

The Paranoid
Former STOS-coder at Paranoia and now focussing on chunky effects as well as exploiting STE-features such as the BLiTTER in demo effects.

505
Multi-talented musician feeling at home as much on the 3-voice square wave generator of the Atari ST as on highly sophisticated multi-channel
synthesizers such as ACE tracker on the Falcon.

Dan
Former Lazer-graphician now enjoying working with "Blender" as well as with classical pixel paint programs to get the best of both worlds.

Legacy
Without a doubt, Paradox' focus on the Atari STE helped this widely underestimated machine to gain the popularity it has today among the small Atari demo scene still active. Zweckform's Atari STE support site will have had its share as well as the STE-FAQ maintained under the Paradox label (initially published under Paranoia). Some of the contributions to demo competitions at various parties caused trouble because Paradox always uses 60Hz screen refresh for higher display quality which seems to confuse modern video beamers.